Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Sunday, May 22, 2011

Hasbara & Israel's Original Sin

When the leader of the Palestinian people is a racist whose educational qualifications are based on a paper denying the Holocaust and attributing Zionist success on collaboration with the Nazis, Israel has a problem.

The Left finds comfort in the Islamic narrative because it reinforces its own prejudices. Today the Left rejoices in finding equivalence between Judaism and Nazism even though the latter negated the former; and between Israelism (Zionism) and Nazism even though the former is based on national self-determination within geographically limited boundaries and the latter, like Islamism is predicated on an absolutist paradigm of global conquest indelibly mixed with a concomitant intolerance of all non-believers.Jewish history should have taught all of us, Left and Right, that dancing with the devil does not bring positive benefits. President Abbas of East Palestine, like his recently reconciled but ultimately murderous partners in West Palestine (the Islamic ‘Resistance’ movement also known as ‘Hamas’), is racist. Mahmoud Abbas, religiously chauvinistic is inspired by contempt that is excused in the West because it is historically ‘justified’ by theological discrimination. And this prejudice has turned to hatred because we no longer turn the other cheek. We are the living proof that prejudice can be overcome.If we are not for ourselves, why, should anyone else be ‘for us’? The time has long past to understand this point.The time has come to regroup and to launch a global information offensive.The most serious error the Israeli Right ever made was ignoring the importance of asserting Jewish sovereignty; of justifying our excision from Arab / Turkish rule as a prerequisite for Jewish self-determination. By dwelling on the trauma of the Shoah the Right gave Israel’s enemies a gift that prescribes how to deny Israel a right to exist.And the Left has failed to internalise Jewish history. Because of its antipathy towards religion it could not accept that Israel also had and has a right to history based on its own myths.Much of the ideological foundation for opposition to Israel today is centred on a mythology of Islamic victimhood. But colonialism has always been of greater importance to the Arab world than it was in the past to the West. Yet while we suffer pangs of conscience for our own past colonial abuses, Islam and the Arab world theologically continue to justify the abuses of their colonial past to this day and their current crimes against humanity.Islam is a colonial faith and therefore hegemonic in its ambitions. This is why there have been Muslim wars since the creation of the faith by Muhammad in the early 7th Century of the Common Era (AD).

“The Koran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.Unlike nearly all biblical violence most of the verses of violence in the Koran are open-ended, meaning that the historical context is not embedded within the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Koran” (some wording omitted).http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/023-violence.htmFrom the Gates of Vienna across to Asia, from the Russian Caucasian mountains in the North down to Africa, Islam has always been a colonial power. It is based on a limitless theologically driven ambition for global domination fuelled by open contempt for the faiths that it is intended to supplant. This intolerance has a purpose. Denigration creates a balance between the superiority of one and the demonstrable inferiority of the other.The economic benefit is clearly understood, but in its failure to deliver tangible gains will often create a desperate need for blind introspection. Israel has become the scapegoat for both sides of this international game of one-upmanship. Losing a colony (Israel) is theologically viewed as an existential threat to the Colonial narrative of a leviathan that should be unstoppable.In Israel today the Left has been sidelined politically because it has lost any creditability it once enjoyed. It has accepted many of the myths of Israel’s enemies; its own identity is based on self denial and self abasement. The Left has ignored its own Near-Eastern history in deference to propaganda and prejudice.The Right, traumatized by the Holocaust and demeaned by history emphasised Jewish helplessness in Europe. But the reality is more complex. Islamic and specifically Arab ethnic bigotry combined with 1,400 years of Muslim / Arab ethnic cleansing made Palestinian Jewish independence an absolute necessity for survival in the Near-East long before the great Jewish Nakba in Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s.The Palestinian Arabs (as opposed to Palestinian Jews) had their chance at independence in 1948 and they squandered it as they have continued to squander it on their hate and their national, racial contempt for us. The theological disgust that informs Muslim notions of superiority are their greatest weakness even as in paradox they have been the Islamic worlds’ greatest strength, supplying an unending army of brutal foot soldiers intent on global conquest.Today as in the past they refuse to acknowledge our history in Israel, they refuse to acknowledge our religious rights and they have experienced no feelings of shame for their past enslavement of our people.Israel exists by right. We have nothing for which to apologize.

2 comments:

Somehow some pontificator will bring up the question of fairness. Israeli fairness to the Palestinians. In Sydney the pontificator will be living in a house on what used to be Aboriginal land and, just like the Palestinians there are many Aboriginals who would love to have that land right now. Is the pontificator going to hand over the deed? Think about handing over the deed? Even feel that maybe he or she should hand over the deed? Not on his or her Nelly. Now when the pontificator asks, and they do ask, whether Israel is being fair to the Palestinians the answer is yes. If Israel's goal is We win/They lose, then Israel is being absolutely fair by staying, by keeping their deed, just like the pontificators of Sydney do.

Excellent point. The comparison between the two nations indicates a similarity but there are significant differences. The Aborigines are not obsessed by a desire to dominate the physical world nor do they possess a theology that justifies genocide. Islam does and fundamentalists do. In 1948 the UN defined Palestinians as 1. not Jewish, and 2. having lived in Israel for 2 years prior to Israeli independence. No other People are defined as refugees, based on this classification. Could any nation in the West survive if it began expelling people for overstaying their visa - if that definition of a refugee was applied a) universally and b) retroactively - back to 1948? Final difference, Arab belligerence is backed by a racial memory of imperial glory and only a fool discounts history. That aggressiveness has become animosity. 63 years of UN schools have not taught the 'refugees' love or tolerance towards their neighbors. The UN destroyed any chance of even a partial return. And that is without even getting into a debate on exchanges of population. You are right though. It isn't fair.